Home VPN for Shared Folder?

Apple-Seeds · November 17, 2022

I have a desktop in my apartment where most my data is stored, backed up, and up to date, but I’m not always there to access it. This has caused a problem of some files being more up-to-date on my laptop than on the desktop and vice versa, so I’ve wanted to find a way to access that data from anywhere.

I looked into setting up a NAS but that’s a bit of an excessive money and time-sink for how much storage I actually use. My thought at this stage has been to run a Windows VPN server on the desktop in the background (it’ll handle that no sweat) that I can just remote into when I’m at school or work or visiting family in case I need to work on a file.

My question is how do I go about setting that scenario up? Are there any good guides that would be helpful? I’m aware OpenVPN is a thing but I’m not exactly sure what I need to do or set up so that I can get it working the way I’d like. Worst comes to worst I could just buy a OneDrive subscription, but this felt like it might be a bit cheaper and a bit more fun and fulfilling than that option.

LIGISTX · November 17, 2022

57 minutes ago, Apple-Seeds said:

I have a desktop in my apartment where most my data is stored, backed up, and up to date, but I’m not always there to access it. This has caused a problem of some files being more up-to-date on my laptop than on the desktop and vice versa, so I’ve wanted to find a way to access that data from anywhere.

I looked into setting up a NAS but that’s a bit of an excessive money and time-sink for how much storage I actually use. My thought at this stage has been to run a Windows VPN server on the desktop in the background (it’ll handle that no sweat) that I can just remote into when I’m at school or work or visiting family in case I need to work on a file.

My question is how do I go about setting that scenario up? Are there any good guides that would be helpful? I’m aware OpenVPN is a thing but I’m not exactly sure what I need to do or set up so that I can get it working the way I’d like. Worst comes to worst I could just buy a OneDrive subscription, but this felt like it might be a bit cheaper and a bit more fun and fulfilling than that option.

If you go the vpn route, use WireGuard. Faster, easier, just all around better. But, for this, I would look into syncthing. I think that may be exactly what you need… I have used it before for a similar situation, it’s a fantastic tool.